


coming up for air

by beverlymarshian



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Fluff, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Bill Denbrough, POV Eddie Kaspbrak, Slow-ish burn, listen this is actually a bike/reddie fic folks it's going to be 50/50
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:55:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25678462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beverlymarshian/pseuds/beverlymarshian
Summary: Mike owns this eccentric little bookstore that has at least seven cats, if the sign on the door is to be believed, mismatching chairs, wonky aisle signage, strange little markers mid-aisle to draw readers over. He stacks the books in genres in only the most general sense of the word. He wears bifocals that he seems to forget are on his face and writes in completely incomprehensible script that he just types into the computer in the end, as he does now in a weird little typing pattern that seems to use every finger on his left hand but only the middle finger on his right. Bill decides that maybe, just maybe, Mike the Bookkeeper is a little odd. It's a delightful conclusion.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 29
Kudos: 67





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi folks! this is an idea I have had percolating for a few weeks and finally decided to break into chapters. I am anticipating it being somewhere in the area of ~30k upon completion, but the doc is at 13k so far. This chapter only features Bill and Mike, but I promise the Richie/Eddie storyline will come along too. HUGE THANK YOU to all my friends on twitter who were excited for this one! Come hang out @beverlymarshian.

The Cheshire Cat Bookstore occupies the entire bottom floor of a mid-century brick building in the southmost part of Capitol Hill. The garish sign sticks out over the entrance of the building, bright neon letters in discordant colours, a cat lying lazily on its back across the top of the name. The window boasts further neon signage informing passersby that you can buy, sell, or trade used books. The front window features a massive book display—the sign says  _ Black History Month _ and the titles range from historical texts to fantasy novels. The weather-worn exterior and the shabby trees out front are not enough to detract from the warm, welcoming tone that the aggressively mismatched neon projects. It is a storefront that actively invites visitors and it has no shortage of patrons. Since Bill parked up the block, pulling what Eddie calls his "granny grocery cart" behind him, he has seen more than a dozen different people entering the store.

He isn't sure how long he stands there, but when he notices one of the people he watched walk into the store exit with a burgeoning bag of books, he concludes it must have been a little too long. There's nothing  _ really _ that should make him nervous about walking into the building. It's just a store. A bookstore where the whole point is the purchase and resale of books. Standing on the sidewalk with a rolling cart full of books he has already read, Bill knows he is the target audience of such a store. Far from being unwelcome, the signs are begging him to enter, to dispose of his unwanted books.

They aren't unwanted, though, which he supposes is what keeps him anchored to the street corner as people walk their dogs in the crisp evening air, as the sun continues to drop lower in the sky, as patrons who definitely noticed him staring when they walked into the store cast him concerned glances when they leave. He is here because of nothing short of an ultimatum—it was Eddie, or the books.

"Ultimatum" is dramatic. Eddie hadn't quite threatened to move out over the debacle, but he had made several compelling points as to the sheer inability to make their way through their house and had thrown a bit of a tantrum at the pile of books that made their way onto his desk. Bill hadn't meant to put them there. It is just that their bookshelves have novels crammed in every direction, between books and on top of books, their coffee table is already stacked eight books high, his room has been reduced to about eight feet of floor space and the rest haphazard piles of books that carve a neat little path between his bed and his ensuite, and the spot next to the microwave in the kitchen was no longer suitable for book storage after the near-disaster that resulted because neither of them really knew the dangers of blocking the extractor vents.

So perhaps Eddie was right, but if Bill couldn't safely stack his books next to the microwave, where else was he supposed to put them  _ but  _ on Eddie's desk?

The answer is, apparently, a secondhand bookstore, because "Bill, you've read all of these fucking books and you actually have three copies of this one" and "Bill, we need space to eat dinner" and "Bill, we can both afford to live in this city without a roommate so keep that in fucking mind".

Bill doesn't much mind eating dinner in bed with his six ongoing novels and his abandoned typewriter drafts, and he clearly has no problem clinging to books he has read, but he really, really doesn't want to live alone, so here he is, outside of a secondhand bookstore Ben recommended, trying to psyche himself up into selling books he has other copies of at home.

When he puts it like that, he feels rather pathetic, and while that typically does little to motivate him (he feels pathetic every time his publisher emails notifying him of another missed deadline, and all that gets him to do is cocoon himself into bed to reread  _ A Little Life _ for the thirteenth time and cry his eyes out), a voice that sounds suspiciously like Eddie's tells him that  _ if you walk back into the house with the same books you walked out in that stupid cart, you're a lost cause _ . Eddie would never say that, but thinking as if he would spurs Bill to take those last few steps towards the entrance.

The door is plastered with various posters, all up-to-date, promoting events on the block—an end-of-season sale at the thrift store down the street, a signing at a record shop down the road, an ad for a community theatre production of  _ Midsummer's Night Dream _ , an open mic at the bar down the corner with a handwritten note in chunky black sharpie telling visitors  _ featuring your favourite bookworm!  _ The most prominent sign features a photo of several cats in a massive cat tree that looks like a Disney-movie enchanted forest that says:  _ Watch your feet! Escape artists live here! _

Everything about the store is welcoming, inviting, neighbourly in a neighbourhood that is gentrified to fuck, and Bill still takes a deep breath as he walks through the door.

No cats immediately dart to their freedom when Bill crosses the threshold, but the bell above the door jangles loudly, and a voice from beyond the shelves near the door shouts a  _ Welcome  _ that he finds himself stammering to reply to, feeling awkward as he yanks his rolling cart over the metal door sill.

The ceiling of the store is lined with white, removable panels and bright fluorescent lighting. Some of the ceiling panels are painted to look like classic book covers. The one closest to the door is a rendition of the Penguin edition of  _ Pride and Prejudice _ , and the next one he can see, several panels over, is a cover of  _ The Sun Also Rises _ that he isn't familiar with. The flooring is a light pine, matching the shelves rising from it to give the store an illusion of continuity, like the shelves grew from the floorboards. The entire effect creates a bright, spacious store that feels at once modern and homey.

To the right of the entrance, behind the front display, is an alcove dedicated to children's and teen novels. To the left is a new release shelf. Beyond these shelves is a truly staggering amount of space, of neat aisles, of plush, mismatched chaises at the end of each aisle. The one within his immediate eye-line is a beige chair with little pink roses patterned across it, occupied by a very surly looking tabby, blinking slowly at him. The aisle the cat guards is crowned with a little sign naming the aisle "Making Sh*t", which apparently includes cookbooks, craft books, and more. The next aisle over, if he cranes his neck to see, is called "Making More Sh*t" and appears to include various home improvement titles.

Far from boasting only titles related to, as they say, making shit, the centre aisles branch off into other aisles, non-fiction and fiction, comic books and plays, everything under the sun organized in a manner that Bill itches to explore. Eddie must have been wrong to suggest he sell his books, and Ben even more incorrect to suggest  _ this _ place, because Bill isn't sure how he is supposed to leave the store without refilling his book bag when the aisles sport smaller section signs with things like "Sad Endings Only" and "Your Favourite Authors Are Gay".

It isn't until the door jingles open behind him and a stranger has to awkwardly side-step him to enter the store that Bill realizes, once again, that he has been weirdly standing in the entryway of the store for far too long. An upgrade from the street corner, perhaps, but still a far cry from his destination. He shakes himself and marches into the store, until the children's shelves give away to the front counter.

The counter is two-sided, bordered on each edge by a bookshelf and divided in the centre by two shelving carts. The right side of the counter is the sales counter, boasting two computer screens and two POS terminals, and bordered on its side by a shelf with merchandise—themed bookmarks, notebooks, and reusable tote bags, all adorned with the same funky store logo. The counter is high up, at chest level on him, and abandoned. A little bell rests on the counter, no doubt to summon the cashiers back from the recesses of the massive bookstore.

The shelves on the other side of the counter have a sign at the top, in the same painted handwriting as the aisle signs, that says  _ Staff Recommendations _ . The shelf is divided into three sections with smaller signs reading  _ Mike, Patty, Richie _ for each section. This shelf borders the second half of the counter, closer to waist-level, with its own little sign reading TRADE-IN. He steps closer to peer at the recommendations, thinking there is no harm in  _ looking _ .

"Hi!" a voice to his right says, startling him out of his hawk-like focus on Patty's recommendations, which have a smaller sign saying  _ great for book clubs! _ He jolts, twisting in the direction of the counter, and his breath catches in his throat.

The man sitting behind the low trade-in counter does not look  _ out of place _ in the homey little bookstore, not exactly. Rather, he looks like the sort of person that a homey little bookstore would hire from his  _ full-time modelling career _ to feature in advertisements. Do secondhand bookstores hire models for advertisements? Do they advertise? Ben must have heard of this place  _ somehow. _

The Model-qua-Bookman sits in a mesh task chair, peering up at Bill through the bifocals perched halfway down his nose. His dark beard is trim and neat, expertly shaped and flattering to his face. He wears a bright, chunky sweater the colour of ripe clementines that fits snugly around his— _ god his arms _ . Bill has to blink several times at the man (lost? is he lost? does he  _ work here _ ? does Bill have to sell his books to  _ this man _ , and if so, how?) before he remembers that people normally respond to greetings.

"Oh! Hi. Hi, right," Bill says, stammering, and immediately wishing he could sink into the floor. The man behind the counter smiles a wide grin, pin-straight, bright teeth, and Bill wonders if maybe sinking into the floor is too kind.

"That's a hefty bag you got there. Buying or selling?"

Bill turns to stare down at his bag like it will give him the wherewithal to speak. It doesn't  _ not _ help.

"Uh. Selling, hopefully. If you'll take them. Roommate's going to k-kick me out if I don't," he says. "Sorry, you don't n-need to know that. I don't know why I said that."

Vaporized. He would like to be vaporized. The man behind the counter laughs a deep, warm laugh.

"Well, we can't have that," he says. "Let me take a look and see if we can save you from eviction?"

Bill gives a jerky nod and tries not to trip over himself as he approaches the counter, eyes flickering between his bag and the man there. He must work there. Attractive people work in all sorts of places, Bill knows this. Bev has a Hollywood flair about her and yet her and Audra co-own their odd little antique shop. He supposes he hoped he would not run into a person quite so attractive in the middle of his early onset midlife crisis while he wills himself to part from at least some of his fucking books.

He pulls the books from the cart, stacking them neatly on the counter. He starts a new pile once the first pile threatens to grow tall enough to block the man from his view. Just because Bill didn't want to have his full-on breakdown in front of someone this attractive doesn't mean he's foolish enough to look  _ away _ . The man watches him, eyes bright, patient, as Bill makes the last stack. It's something like fifty books, all carefully selected from his collection, and all duplicates.

Mike/Patty/Richie/possibly someone else lets out a low whistle at the piles. "These are in good condition."

Bill doesn't think he should preen at the compliment, but he does anyway. "T-thanks! Uh. These are my duplicate copies so they aren't as—as well-read."

"Bit of a book hoarder?" the man says, thumbing through a copy of  _ Survivor _ before setting it aside. For himself? Bill needs his name before looking back at the recommendations shelf.

"If you ask my roommate, yeah," Bill says. The Bookman (fuck, fuck, stupid name) peers up at him again, lips quirked into a smile.

"That sounds like something a book hoarder in denial would say."

Bill feels himself flush. "Maybe. Maybe a little. I—yes, maybe, I would say that I perhaps hoard books. I—yeah," he finishes lamely.

Bill hates himself for all of the two second pause before the Bookman starts laughing that same warm laugh, belly-deep and open, teeth flashing and head tilting back a little. If all it takes is making a fool of himself to earn that laugh, Bill thinks he has got it in the fucking bag.

"I'm teasing you, I'm sorry. My book hoarding problem was so bad that I had to open a bookstore," the Bookman says.

"Are you Mike, Patty, or Richie?" Bill asks, feeling a little brave, and earns himself another laugh.

"Thankfully not Richie, unfortunately not Patty," he says. "Mike. Nice to meet you."

Mike starts scanning the piles of books into the system. He works off paper and the screen at the same time, prices coming up for each of the books, then marking down a different figure on a ledger sheet in chicken scratch that Bill doesn't think he could make out even if the sheet was facing him. He repeats these steps with each of the books, not distracted from either the conversation (is this a conversation? it has to count) or the task at hand.

Bill turns back, peering at the shelves again. Patty's recommendations all seem to be vaguely oriented towards book clubs, featuring titles that Bill is familiar with but also unfamiliar finds. Each book is accompanied by a little note with suggested discussion questions. Richie's shelf is the most chaotic, featuring a non-fiction book about forks, a Douglas Coupeland title, a pulpy science fiction novel from an author Bill has never heard of, several graphic novels, including something called  _ Sex Criminals _ , and a total lack of thematic coherence. Each of these has a sticky note stuck to the shelf with comments like  _ very sexy, lots of criminals _ and  _ do you think Nostradamus said hi back?  _ none of which are particularly helpful. Mike's shelf appears to be composed of essays, memoirs, and non-fiction titles, and each book is accompanied by a neatly-typed little review.

"Why  _ thankfully not Richie _ ?" Bill asks, still eyeing Mike's shelf. "Is it the genre-hopping?"

This seems to startle another laugh out of Mike and Bill grins to himself. "No, although it certainly doesn't help. He's just a lot."

The review of Mike's that has caught his eye, attached to a book titled  _ I Can’t Date Jesus _ , is a far cry from the sort of review that Bill is used to. It appears to be something deeply personal entwined with how his experiences impacted his reading of the book.

"Oh wow. Three copies of  _ Attic Room _ ? Is it that good?" Mike asks. Bill twists to look back up at Mike. There is no familiarity with the title on his face, although his eyes dart down to the author's name and the  _ New York Times Bestseller _ . Bill is ever so glad to have a common name for once. From the look of the wall, it's very much not Mike's style. Patty would be the person most likely to have read it, if any of them.

"Uh. It's pretty s-shit, actually. Unimaginative. Pessimistic."

Mike cocks his head to the side when he looks up next, eyes large, blinking slowly behind the lenses. Like the tabby at the end of the aisle. "Why the three copies, then? Friend of the author?"

He couldn't have just lied, could he? Too worried about the slim chance Mike would trust a stranger's recommendation when Patty seems to have her finger on the pulse of new releases and Richie seems to have such eclectic taste. He isn't sure he could have lied anyway, not really.

"Something like that."

Mike's stare is piercing without being cold, flickering across Bill's face. He doesn't push, though, maybe because he senses that it's sensitive or more likely because he doesn't really care to know.  _ Or, is too polite to push _ , he forces himself to think, more optimistically. Attic Room might have been better with a little more optimism. It certainly wouldn't have made it worse.

He watches as Mike scans his books in, one at a time, his hands itching to snatch several back—his second, almost pristine copy of  _ Baby Teeth _ , his actually unopened copy  _ Killing Floor _ , his slightly earmarked but otherwise unsullied third copy of  _ The Secret History _ . He resists the urge, reminding himself that not only does this trip mean he is down to only one or two copies of his favourite books (always the original copies he purchased, no matter how battered and bruised they were) but that, more importantly, Eddie will ease off his case by five percent and they will “have space to eat”.

His eyes are drawn to the little flags sticking up from the neck of the computer monitor. The rainbow flag on the till wasn't unusual. There are lots of rainbows, it's fucking Seattle. If there wasn't a rainbow it would be more out of sight, maybe. But there is also a gay flag, a bi flag, a trans flag, and you know. They're just flags and it's not like Bill can imagine himself  _ saying  _ anything but he thinks he's allowed to develop a tiny infatuation with a handsome man selling books that is at least, at the highest theoretical level, within Bill's playing field.

"Your roommate is in luck, it looks like we can take all of these!" Mike says once the stack of books has made its way behind the counter, sorted loosely by genre.

So he has a bit of a problem letting things go. That's something that Eddie, his editors, his critics, and the end of the Attic Room all have in common, he supposes. That they all see right through that particular problem of his. Eddie is the only person he doesn't mind  _ looking _ , so he supposes that if he was going to listen to anyone, it would be him. His hands continue to itch, but he keeps them at his sides, worrying the edges of his flannel, instead of reaching out.

"Thank G-God. Apartment-hunting in this city is a n-nightmare," Bill says. He likes the way that Mike smiles when he listens to him talk, so he keeps talking. "I'll be sure to t-tell Eddie to send you a thank you card."

Mike laughs. "You did all the work lugging them down here, I won't take your credit."

Bill feels his face flush and if he feels a spark of pride, that is between him and God. If he makes it home with an empty cart, Eddie will be happy, of course he will, but because it's Eddie he knows it will come out as something less than pleased and closer to  _ so when are you going to take the next batch in _ .

"So what's Eddie's roommate's name?" Mike asks, moving the books from his counter to the teetering piles behind him. Now that Bill peers behind the counter, he sees that Mike's chair is barricaded in piles and piles of almost-genre-sorted books, and other piles that are simply crowned in post-it notes he can't quite read.

Mostly, however, he stumbles over Mike's question.

"Oh! Oh I—I meant to introduce myself. Back when—anyway. I'm Bill, sorry," he manages eventually, and if he has made a total fool of himself, Mike is kind enough not to react.

"Well, Bill. Cash or store credit? You get more for store credit and it can be applied to up to half your purchase."  _ Bill _ . There is his name in Mike’s voice. It has never sounded so good.

Ben told him and Eddie about this, warned him really, and before Bill could think  _ half-off is pretty damn good _ , Eddie had firmly suggested that he opt for the cash back. Insisted, really. It certainly felt non-optional. It did, however, give him a reason to come back, and really, it supported the local bookstore  _ better _ because the store credit encourages you to purchase more books! He was going to want to buy something regardless. A voice that once again sounds too much like Eddie's says  _ your reason to come back is to resell the books that are stuffed between our fucking couch cushions _ .

"Store credit," he says, and the Eddie in his head (it's pretty fucked up that Eddie, of all his friends, is his conscience and not a more sensible choice like  _ Ben _ ) starts cussing him out.

It is well worth the bursting smile the answer earns. "Good man. We'll see you back here, then?"

"Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Got to replenish my collection."

"What will Eddie say?" Mike asks, teasing. It makes Bill’s heart jump in his chest to hear Mike say Eddie’s name, just because it’s something Bill-adjacent. He thinks he either needs Mike to say his name again, or he needs to get laid. Or both.

"He'll probably just move out honestly and I couldn't bear that."

"Oh. Are you two close?" Mike asks.

And—and he's probably just asking to be polite, out of vague concern. He seems like a nice guy, all wide smiles and twinkling eyes and  _ fuck _ what a laugh, right? But Bill isn't beyond a little wishful thinking that Mike could, possibly, be asking for other reasons. A little bit of optimism, perhaps. Never too late to try something new.

"We are, yeah. Been together since college," he says, immediately regretting his phrasing. Not because it paints an incorrect picture, but because it causes him to course-correct too hard in the other direction. "Not—not together-together. That was a disaster when we tried. I-I mean, like brothers."

It was not the way that Bill wanted to orally fill out a fucking dating profile (I'm in my mid-thirties, I still have a roommate, that roommate is my best friend and you know what we might be a little codependent, we have slept together once but it's really, really not like that, it didn't go well, oh and I like men). Bill is ready to completely write off every returning, to call back Audra and get her recommendation for a place a little further from his apartment but that, statistically, does not contain an absurdly handsome model-bookkeeper.

Bill waits for a look. He knows the one: the one that says  _ look buddy you're nice and all but _ ; the one he gets from his editors when the new chapter is "incomprehensible"; the one he gets from Eddie sometimes when Eddie catches him still up at three in the morning, mumbling to himself at the kitchen table. It is a look that is at once pitying and distancing, one that says  _ you're a little odd _ . From Eddie, it is always couched in something bordering on soft: you're odd but you're my weirdo. Eddie gets deeply, obsessively protective over Bill's book reviews, reading them aloud in a mocking voice over breakfast until Bill can laugh at them. Eddie's the only one whose looks he can tolerate.

The look never comes. Mike looks up at him again through those glasses, sliding lower on his nose.

"I get that. Friendships where the friendship always comes first," Mike says instead. He nods a little, pointing with his chin towards the recommendation shelves. "Patty and Richie are that to me. Although, I must admit, I haven't slept with Patty."

Mike owns this eccentric little bookstore that has at least seven cats, if the sign on the door is to be believed, mismatching chairs, wonky aisle signage, strange little markers mid-aisle to draw readers over. He stacks the books in genres in only the most general sense of the word. He wears bifocals that he seems to forget are on his face and writes in completely incomprehensible script that he just types into the computer in the end, as he does now in a weird little typing pattern that seems to use every finger on his left hand but only the middle finger on his right. Bill decides that maybe, just maybe, Mike the Bookkeeper is a little odd. It's a delightful conclusion.

_ Lucky Richie _ , Bill almost says, but the twist in his stomach and the clamminess of his hands at even the thought of it is enough to talk him out of it. He has a store credit, he can come back and maybe flirt with the bookkeeper again.

"Good friends are everything," he says again, and it is certainly a more honest thing coming from him. He thinks of the ones he has—Eddie, who probably wouldn't move out if he kept the books; Ben, who reads all his drafts and lets him lie in his lap when they are particularly bad; Bev and Audra, who came into his life at such different times but show no sign of leaving, not even once they found each other.

It seems like the right thing to say to Mike too, because his smile goes from stunning to blinding, his glasses digging into his cheeks now. "They sure are."

Mike takes his phone number (for the account, although Bill's heart does stutter in his chest when he asks anyway), gives him a little receipt that has their logo on it and his new account balance, and three complimentary bookmarks that have black-and-white images of Seattle on them. Mike presses all of these into his hand, fingers brushing. He tells him he can use the credit today, if he likes, but Bill's brain is still buzzing from the contact and he thinks that if he dares to bring home a book on the first trip, he will be testing Eddie's patience too much.

Instead, more life in his step on the way out than on the way in, Bill rolls his empty cart back the way he came, stealing a glance back at Mike who stares at him as he leaves with a big smile and a controlled little wave. He waves back, nearly trips over a cat that has crawled over to stake out the door, and hums all the way back to his car.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I’m coming with you." Eddie stands from the kitchen counter, and Bill gawks at the sight of him, fully dressed on a Saturday.
> 
> "I don’t really n-need any help—"
> 
> “I’m not coming to help you, asshole. I’m coming because you have no self-control,” Eddie says, shoving his phone in his pocket midway through a round of Solitaire he doesn’t think he can recover from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> literally couldn't have done with without @kaspbee I owe you my life bee and my heart and my soul take it all. if you liked this chapter thank bee because they beta'd the living hell outta it and I adore them

The second time he walks into the Cheshire Cat, one week later, with his cart stuffed fuller (to Eddie’s begrudging respect), it isn’t Mike at the counter. Instead, it’s some guy leaning too far back in the chair, one foot up on the counter, tongue poked out between his teeth, scribbling rapidly onto a clipboard. He is wearing a bright pink t-shirt with a fuzzy-looking beige llama on it that says _no prob-llama_ and a button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow with little paper cranes in various, somewhat odd tones of green, orange, blue, and mustard. It looks a little bit like something you would find at Marshall’s—technically brand name, but with something almost imperceptibly _wrong_ about it. The only thing he knows about Richie is that he is "a lot" but he feels fairly confident in his conclusion that this is him.

Bill’s presence at the counter startles him, clipboard clattering to the ground and knee that’s not suspended in the air jolting up to hit the underside of the counter. He lets out a funny little yelp before hitting Bill with a grin a mile wide.

"Hey man. Sorry about that. Trade-in?" he asks. He clears off the top of the counter, which is covered in bright coloured sticky notes in different shapes (a Christmas tree, a strand of DNA, a barn owl). He reattaches some of the notes to the edge of the counter and some to his pants.

Bill hasn’t met Patty yet but he thinks it is fair to assume that she has to be either excruciatingly patient or a little bit odd herself if she willingly works here.

"Yes, yeah. I have an account," he says, and Richie turns to the computer, humming something that could be a terribly off-tune rendition of _Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat_ , although he resists further examination. 

He can’t help but be a little disappointed. Of course Mike doesn’t just sit at the trade-in counter all day. The stacks of incoming books behind the counter are different from his last visit, still tall and teetering but completely genre-abandoned, each book labelled with another odd sticky note. Mike could simply not be working, of course, but there are tonnes of other tasks that need doing in a bookstore, right? Inventory. Stocking shelves. 

"Is M-Mike working today?" he asks before he can chicken out.

Richie jerks his head upwards and tilts it to the side in an exaggerated motion. His neck makes an audible, concerning pop that he doesn’t appear to register. " _Mike_? Interesting."

Bill regrets everything he has done today, from opening his mouth all the way back to getting out of bed this morning. To be safe, he also regrets being born.

"It’s—it’s no big deal. Sorry, you p-probably have a policy against disclosing schedules."

"Don’t break the sound barrier with the backpedal, bud," Richie says, a wild, toothy grin on his face. "What’s your name?"

It feels like a trap, but Bill can’t tell if it is one he can escape or one of those snares where struggling just skewers you further.

"Bill."

"Bill," Richie says, with a long hum. "Well Bill, what are your intentions towards our dear Michael?"

It would have been safer to play dead. "N-nothing, no intentions. Nothing."

All hopes that Richie will return to the strange pattern he had gotten into, scanning the books in and stacking them with a long reach behind himself without quite looking at the piles, are dashed when Richie leans forward on the counter. His bright blue eyes are bug-like behind gigantic, hipster lenses that look straight out of one of those online glasses catalogues boasting cheap lenses and dozens of patterns. Bill wonders if there’s an option to make custom microscopic lenses because he has certainly never felt so thoroughly scrutinized by a stranger.

"I can go get him, if you like," Richie says.

It is as if he tumbled through the looking glass into a different version of the bookstore. Instead of the friendly, handsome, eccentric bookkeeper, he gets this Gonzo-looking dude who manages to terrify him, in an abstract sense. Bill swallows hard against his sandpaper throat.

"No! No, t-that’s okay. I’m going to go look around," Bill says hurriedly, breaking their gaze to haul the last of the books onto the counter.

Richie leans back into his chair, the ghost of a smile still playing on his face. "Sure man. You can leave the granny cart here if you like."

Bill stacks the rest of his books on the counter, high enough to block Richie from view, and he takes his perfectly age-appropriate grocery/book cart with him as he wanders down the aisles.

The store is bigger than he could have imagined, divided by the architecture of the building into two sections. This end of the store, although far from boasting any sort of genuine organizational system, appears loosely to be focussed on non-fiction books. He passes through a book arch and finds himself in a section more familiar to him. The hanging sign says “Thrilling!” and the markers down the aisle appear to break the aisle into further subsections, like _it’s all in your head_ , _politics, huh?_ , and _we love unhinged b*tches_.

If the store had a single iota of logic, the neighbouring aisle would have been horror. Instead it is an aisle for “Heroine-Centred Narratives”, subtitled: _if you call it chick lit, you have Patty to deal with_. Bill has no particular issue with the labelling of the aisle so much as its positioning within the strange and incomprehensible universe of this funky little bookstore.

Despite all its eccentricities, there is someone in almost every aisle, someone draped over every chaise. At the end of the not-chick-lit aisle, a child with short, curly hair crouches over a pitch-black cat laying belly-up on the floor. The thriller aisle has two older women discussing a book one of them brandishes, talking with their hands as much as the quick, snappy words flying between them. As Bill wanders further into the store, he finds more people, more cushy chairs, and more cats. An orange tabby with a shaggy mane sits at eye level on a shelf when Bill finally reaches the horror section, couched illogically between “Coming of Age” and “Shall I Compare Thee?” aisles. The cat stares at him until Bill reaches out to scratch him behind the ears, and then curls up into a little ball on the shelf, rumbling like an engine.

Bill gets a little lost in the aisle, less because of the organization system and more because of the collection. He picks up and puts down a Joyce Carol Oates cover he hasn’t seen before because he knows it’s in his collection. He flits between the submarkers, which prove to be less chaotic than he thinks once he gets into it. Within the subgenres, the texts are alphabetical by author, so some logic is retained, although authors who spread across subgenres have their works split from each other. There’s a sort of charm in this. Like between the three of them, Patty, Richie, and Mike said: fuck the Dewey decimal system, fuck convention, let’s go. Bill skitters away from the _monster mash_ section where he sees two copies of _Attic Room_ squeezed next to _Into the Deep_ and _The Black Rapids_.

He has four new books in his cart and has started petting the orange tabby again to do something with his hands other than grab more when a voice cuts down the aisle. “Bill! Hi.”

Bill turns too quickly towards the familiar voice.

Tall. Bill knew he was tall before, even sitting down, but knowing that someone is theoretically tall in addition to having the body of a god _and_ working in a bookstore was very different than having that same someone sidle up to you in the “Not Casper” section of their own bookstore, wearing black jeans and a red-black flannel rolled up to the elbows. Bill doesn’t know whether to stare at his veiny, sculpted arms, the way his shirt clings to his chest, or worst of all, directly at the wide fucking smile illuminating the entire aisle.

“Oh! Aslan likes you. He’s usually a tough nut to crack,” Mike says, nodding towards the cat. Bill stares for a moment. He does look like an Aslan.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever had a cat like me before.”

“I’m sure that’s not true. Aslan is an excellent judge of character.” Mike blinks several times, brow furrowing. “Sorry, I’m a bit of a cat dad.”

“It’s cute,” Bill says, before he can come up with a word that conveys both _actually you’re the hottest person I’ve ever met_ and _please don’t stop talking under any circumstances and tell me all your cats’ names_ without sounding like a creep. Mike’s brow unfurrows and he hits Bill with another blinding smile.

"Richie mentioned you were here,” Mike says. “I hope he didn’t say anything weird to you. He can be a bit of a dick.”

Bill doesn’t think he remembers a single word he exchanged with Richie between making a fool of himself and stammering and stumbling away from the counter, but instead of admitting to that, he says, "No, n-nothing weird."

“Oh! Good. Good. It’s nice to have you back.”

Bill had assumed that he was the tense one: petting Aslan at a rate so furious that he was convinced the cat would flee, squeezing a book he had intended to reshelve so tight enough in his hand that he thinks he may have to purchase it now for the damage he has done to the spine, skin prickling with a nervous sweat when he laid eyes on Mike coming down the aisle towards him, surrounding by books, like watching him walk through his own home. But after he answers, he notices Mike’s shoulders drop down, his stance widen, the tense line of his jaw loosen to something softer. He wonders desperately what Richie might have said to him but also thinks he would rather walk into traffic than attempt to navigate another conversation with him.

In his attempts to overanalyze Mike’s body language, the conversation between them lulls. He scrabbles, panicked, in his mind for a topic, for something to keep Mike here a few moments longer, trying to remember a single title he dropped down into his book bag or the name of the coffee shop around the corner or maybe a joking observation about Richie that he thinks might land well. Mike doesn’t give him the chance to get his footing again.

"So I started _Attic Room_."

A worse sentence probably exists in this universe. Sentences like "Bill I am moving out" or "there’s an impending nuclear apocalypse", but right now there are no five words so perfectly calibrated to convince Bill that he needs to pack up and move to fucking Nunavut. Mike says it so casually, reaching over to straighten several books that were reshelved improperly, while Bill’s stomach drops out of his abdomen and plummets somewhere in the vicinity of the molten core of the planet.

His inner monologue sounds far too much like Eddie, coming home from work and talking a mile-a-minute about something to do with the job he hates: _oh great, now he thinks I don’t read good books. I should have fucking told him that I wrote it. If I tell him now, I look like an idiot. Better late than never, though, right? He’ll think you’re an idiot eventually. I should tell him now before he finishes. I need to._

Before Bill can figure out what to say, if anything, or whether the appropriate reaction is somewhere between finding another secondhand bookstore and changing his identity, Mike continues.

“I like to read a few things at a time so it’s slow going, but I feel like you were a little hard on it. It’s no font of positivity but it’s not unimaginative.”

This would be the time to tell him that he wrote it.

“It’s not just m-me,” Bill insists. “It was the critical consensus.”

Mike shrugs. "I read book reviews with a grain of salt. Stories are so personal."

"That’s...true," Bill admits, the words pulling from his mouth in a crawl. It is true. _Attic Room_ was his _most_ personal. "It doesn’t make a b-bad story good, though."

“I’m liking it so far. I feel a little like it’s shelved in the wrong section, but that’s the peril of genres,” Mike says, waving a little towards the section sign above his head. It says _Things You’d Find in Twilight_. The next sign over says _If You Liked Crimson Peak..._

“Where would you put it?” Bill asks, not certain he wants the answer.

Mike hums, eyes darting to the top of the neighbouring aisles. Bill cranes to look as well, following his line of sight, but Mike doesn’t seem to settle on any particular section. Instead, his eyes get a far away look, glazed over, lost in thought. Bill watches his face instead, the way his jaw works, the way his eyes twitch, the soft creases in his forehead. Bill doesn’t notice that he isn’t blinking until he does again, eyes snapping to Bill.

“Meditations on Grief.”

The soft squeak that claws its way up Bill’s throat is enough to take the edge off the need to scream. _Meditations on Grief_. The observation is at once a crowbar to his knees and a weight off his shoulders. He is no longer worried about Mike _liking_ it or not. He won’t. He couldn’t. Now he is worried about how quickly Mike read through the horror and the gore and the showy elements to understand that the book is a funeral dirge. A memorial. It’s suddenly too personal. If he tells Mike that he wrote it, Mike will see straight through him.

"You’re a little genre-averse for someone who only seems to only read non-fiction," he says, a clumsy redirect.

Mike laughs, but this time it’s a different sound, something startled out of him. It’s gorgeous, punchy, and Bill wants to bottle it in bulk, to unscrew the lid in the early morning when he first wakes up, over lunchtime, whenever he hits a writer’s block. He thinks of Helen of Troy and the wars that were fought over her beauty. He has always claimed to be a pacifist but he worries there’s little he wouldn’t do for that laugh.

"Hey now, there’s still a range. Non-fiction is barely a genre. It’s an umbrella. I can read about the Haitian Revolution _and_ the establishment of food safety regulation in the United States."

“Is that second one an actual book?”

“Yes! Really, really good, too. Don’t let Richie catch me saying anything positive about the government but I am very grateful for consumer protection regulation.”

It’s certainly not the sort of book Bill would ever pick out himself. Nothing. But currently the overlap between books he has read and books Mike has read is, barring further exploration, limited to _Attic Room_ and he sure as fuck doesn’t want to discuss that with Mike when he gets to the ending and is, like all his readers, disappointed. He doesn’t know how to talk about it without making it too much. He desperately _wants_ to talk to Mike about something, about how personal his book reviews seem, how he got here with Richie and Patty, how many cats he owns and where they go at night, how they decided on an organization system that defies both library science and logic, anything to keep him talking.

“Do you have a copy?” he hears himself ask. It’s a good place to start.

Mike beams. “Oh my god, yes. Come with me.”

Bill hastily shoves the book clenched in his hand into the cart, pulling the drawstring at the top closed. Mike waits, not a patient wait either, but tapping the fingers of his right hand against his thighs in a staccato rhythm, rolling up onto the balls of his feet, body already angled to lead the way, eyes darting behind him to watch Bill pack up.

He leads him through the aisles, arms flapping through the air as he waxes on about history’s unsung heroes, about the relationship between science and society, and the importance of scientific literacy. He tells Bill that he grew up on a farm, that everything he ate as a child he could follow the thread between his dinner plate and the source, how different this is from the modern, industrialized food system. Bill listens, and asks questions, and laughs when Mike makes silly puns about the FDA, excitement building for a book that is quite literally about the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. Bill doubts there is anything he wouldn’t read if Mike sang its praises like this.

* * *

Eddie likes to think of himself as a reasonable person and a reasonable roommate. He suspects that if he voiced such an opinion aloud, he would get a resounding chorus of laughter from his asshole fucking friends because they like nothing more than to gang up on him. All that being said, if he were to stab an index finger in the centre of Bill’s chest, cutting off the laughter, and look him dead in the eye and ask if he was a reasonable roommate, Eddie thinks he could get a _yes_ out of him. Whether that yes would be fuelled by fear or honesty is beyond his concern, because it is _absolutely the truth_.

This is to say that he waited a very, very long time before bringing up the book problem. And it was a problem. Eddie is intimately familiar with problems, having cycled through his own: mommy issues, an unhappy marriage, divorce problems, buckets of anxiety, that brief but harrowing three week period in which Eddie convinced himself that he needed to learn how to cook, bought a truly staggering number of eCookbooks that even now he isn’t prepared to quantify outside the four walls of his therapist’s office, and nearly burned their apartment down _twice_ before concluding that he really, really liked takeout.

So Eddie fancies himself a bit of an expert on when things become problems. That is why he could say with conviction that Bill’s book collecting was a problem.

When he moved in with Bill after his divorce, the bookshelves were already full. This wasn’t a surprise, exactly—it _is_ their sole purpose, to house books. The problem began, in its earliest stages, by the boxes of books that continued to arrive, first in Amazon boxes until Ben’s boyfriend, Oliver, had begged him to start ordering from a smaller online reseller.

It didn’t become a problem when the concept of shelving became looser, when books became crammed at all angles between the tops of other books and the shelf above, when the top of the unit gathered a stack of books that brushed the ceiling. The books were still on the shelves. It wasn’t a problem when Bill’s room became less of a bedroom and more like a library-qua-bomb site, because that was his space, and Bill didn’t come into Eddie’s room and criticize him for the growing number of plants he kept along his windowsill. It wasn’t even _quite_ a problem when books started piling on surfaces around the house: on the tank of the toilet, in the middle of their dining table, on the surface and in the nooks and crannies of the coffee table, on top of the fridge. These spaces weren’t quite being used for anything.

It really didn’t feel like a problem until Eddie brought home a Grindr date whose name was either Mark or Matt or neither of those things, and he had him pressed up against his closed door, mouthing at his neck, when Mark-Matt said _dude, are you like, a hoarder?_ Eddie turned around, half-hard, incredibly annoyed, and saw the state of their house for the first time. How they ate with bowls perched on their laps instead of on tables. How they had carefully carved little footpaths to navigate the wreckage. How they had books accumulated in the _pantry_ , for fuck’s sake. The problem was that these piles were all so neat, orderly, and gradually-accumulating that Eddie didn’t notice they were a problem.

When he confronted Bill about it the next morning (Mark-Matt had stayed, asking to borrow a book called _Pattern Recognition_ that felt a little too on-the-nose, and Eddie had hastened him out of the house with that book and absolutely no intention to call him), Bill cycled through several stages of denial before finally packing books into his fucking geriatric shopping cart two weeks ago.

It has been exciting seeing the coffee table for the first time in months. Eddie put a coaster down on it the other day and was able to do so without risking a traumatic brain injury from several pounds of books toppling onto his head. Bill was, admittedly, doing a rather good job—his first two trips he had freed them of almost 100 books, most of the coffee table. He made a third trip mid-week, partway through some book called _The Poison Squad_ that he insisted he had to talk to the hot bookseller about.

The problem was that he kept bringing books home when the point was to declutter. He could bring more books home when he got rid of the ones he didn’t need and read the ones he had. Instead, Bill keeps babbling on about this damn fucking book: when Eddie dabbed salicylic acid on a truly infuriating spot on the side of his nose, Bill informed him that meat used to be preserved with salicylic acid, making Eddie wish he could go vegetarian again. When Eddie was pouring oat milk into his Froot Loops (being an adult means that you can eat sugary fucking cereal), Bill babbled on about formaldehyde in dairy milk, and Eddie wished he could give up dairy again.

So when Saturday rolls around again, two weeks from Bill’s first venture to the bookstore Eddie hasn’t cared to learn the name of, Eddie forces himself out of bed early to ensure he is sitting at the kitchen table when Bill tries to sneak out with his cart.

"Where the fuck do you think you’re going?" he says, because if he can’t have a bit of fun, what’s the fucking point?

Bill jolts first, then freezes in the hallway. Eddie’s aware that seeing him up before noon on a Saturday is like witnessing the bloom of a selenicereus grandiflorus. This means that although he is grumpy, he also has the element of surprise on his side.

Bill turns around slowly, hands raised, like caught in the beam of a spotlight. In one hand is that same damn book that has been Eddie’s undoing this week, but the bookmark has wormed its way to the very end, tucked behind the back cover.

"I’m just t-taking some more books in," he says, uncertain.

"I’m coming with you." Eddie stands from the kitchen counter, and Bill gawks at the sight of him, fully dressed on a Saturday.

"I don’t really n-need any help—"

“I’m not coming to help you, asshole. I’m coming because you have no self-control,” Eddie says, shoving his phone in his pocket midway through a round of Solitaire he doesn’t think he can recover from.

“I have self-control!” Bill protests weakly, eyes skittering across the kitchen, the first room he tackled, as if to demonstrate that he had done the bare minimum. Congratulations.

“You came back with eight new books on Wednesday. Eight," Eddie says, pointing to the little corner of the coffee table where the new books were forming the beginnings of an imposing tower.

Bill flushes from the top of his crewneck all the way up his face. “I have a store credit!”

“Because you keep asking for store credit.”

Bill slumps a little, leaning his weight on the cart. "It’s a really good deal. You can use it, if you want."

“Use your store credit? To get more fucking books? No, dude. I’m coming with you so you don’t bring home more than three books,” Eddie growls, tugging at the hem of his soft cotton turtleneck where it rode up while he was seated.

Bill opens his mouth and closes it three times before he settles on: "W-wait. So I can still bring some home?"

Like Eddie said, he’s a reasonable roommate.

“Of course you can. I’m not trying to be unreasonable, bro. I just want to see the floor. Have space for our friends to sit on movie night. Maybe bring back a date without feeling like me getting some fucking dick is the prize in the middle of a labyrinth."

He grabs a reusable bag from Trader Joe’s, one with a strange Victorian woman with a parasol that Audra left at their place one week and never returned for, which has since been their bag for the meagre selection of grocery items within their home cooking menu. He shoves a few of the books remaining on the kitchen table, a pile that Bill calls his _next to go_ pile, to feel a little bit helpful.

“You seriously can’t blame your inability to pull on my books,” Bill says, with full knowledge of the Mark-Matt incident and absolutely no self-awareness. He seems to relax, though, hands dropping back down to his sides from their tense, awkward position still raised in the air, not protesting further to the company.

“Well, it has certainly scared off any repeat visitors.”

“Pretty sure that’s you being picky," Bill says, and that hits about as close to the truth of _Eddie has no idea how to date and is kind of terrified to start_ as either of them want to get this early on a Saturday morning.

“Oh fuck off," Eddie spits, instead of arguing. "Tell me for the fourth time about Mike putting his hand on your arm on Wednesday.”

“You’ll understand when you see him," Bill insists, waving the hand with the book in various complex motions that indicate _tall_ and _big_ , like Eddie hasn’t had to sit here and listen to him describe Mike a dozen times over the last two weeks. He thinks he could draw him from a memory he doesn’t have, at this point.

"We’ll see."

* * *

Not to give Bill any credit, but he certainly isn’t wrong about Mike. He’s a tall glass of water and the way he lights up when his eyes catch on Bill would be enough to make even a stronger man than Bill disintegrate into a puddle, which is a rough estimation of the sound Bill makes when Mike strides down the aisle towards him.

Eddie thought this would be an easy thing, in and out, but of course nothing Bill does could be easy. He couldn’t just "break his engagement" with Audra, he had to do it, get drunk and sad, and then sleep with his best friend, Bev. He didn’t just have to "not date Bev", he had to set her up with Audra. Successfully. It was an all-too-infuriating experience that Eddie had just sat back and observed with the morbid curiosity of someone with any ethical awareness being dragged to Seaworld.

Bill introduces them, but once the two of them start talking about the book that Eddie literally never wants to hear about again, they disappear in the stacks. Someone named Patty, with her hair twisted in stunning, complex braids, a permanent twinkle in her eyes, starts filtering through the donated books, paying him no attention as he lingers near the counter.

He watches Bill and Mike until they round a corner into a different section of the store. It’s a bit of an odd place. He hasn’t spent much time in secondhand bookstores (their apartment only has room for one reader), but he doubts most places have such unusual signage or quite so many cats. From his awkward spot near the counter, he can see at least three, and a tail sticking out from around the edge of a shelf. Three and half? He isn’t sure what proportion of the average cat the tail is.

Eddie is perfectly content to stand a normal distance away from the nearest cat, skittering in front of the “Featured” shelf opposite the counter. He knows nothing about cats, but this critter is mostly black, with a white stomach and a tuft of white fur under its nose. It only has three legs but it bounds around the shelves anyway, running full speed, nails clacking softly on the ground, chasing around a little ratty toy. He watches the cat until it settles into a curl on the ground in front of the shelf, the toy abandoned.

When the cat stares back at him he turns towards the recommendation shelf instead, completely uninterested in getting into what is rumoured to be a very challenging staring contest. The recommendations shelf runs from the trade-in counter to the aisle gap. The section in the centre, Richie’s section, if the label is to be believed, catches his attention.

He quickly concludes that Richie enjoys chaos. There’s a picture book on the top shelf called _Stephanie’s Ponytail_ , with a bright blue sticky note on the cover saying: _must be read aloud!_ One shelf down is a different title, a graphic novel called _Bitch Planet_ , with a sticky note reading: _f**k prisons_. The next shelf features a pair of fantasy novels by Robin McKinley with a note that they can be read in either order, but that the experience is very different. All of the notes are written in neat, blocky handwriting, all capital letters. It’s disorienting.

"See something you like?" a voice to his left says.

A man he suspects to be Richie, from Bill’s brief description strolls over from the aisles Bill disappeared down. He stops at the end of the recommendations shelf, a few feet from Eddie. A small black cat with long, shedding fur perches on his shoulder like something out of a fucking Disney movie. It would look absurd if not for the width of his shoulders, the way that his shirt stretches too tight over his chest, bright red, patterned with what appears to be cartoon hot dogs dancing.

Eddie is struck at once with two thoughts: first, that this man does not know how to dress himself; and second, that he very, very badly wants to undress him. His palms itch to push the sleeves of the shirt down, to palm those shoulders, to slide his hands down those arms.

If he were a suave version of himself, he would smile, look up at this guy through his lashes, and say something like _I sure do_. Instead, because Eddie is still more self-sabotaging than he is horny, he says:

“No. Your taste is a fucking disaster.”

Attaboy Kaspbrak. Really stuck the fucking landing.

He laughs. A stupid sound. It falls from his mouth both stuttering and squirrely, pitch and volume fluctuating wildly as it drags on for longer than he thinks is strictly justified. Eddie wants to drown in the sound, or swallow it down, bodies pressed against the shelves. He needs the books of out their damn apartment so he can get fucking laid.

"How do you know which shelf is mine?" Richie asks, wiping an actual fucking tear from the corner of his eye.

“I just assumed you read like you dress.”

“Oh? How do I dress?”

“Like someone told you about colour theory once and you decided to rebel against the very concept.”

This drags another peal of laughter from Richie, enough to make the cat on his shoulder do something akin to an eye roll before leaping to the ground in a graceful pounce, disappearing down a distant aisle. Eddie, trapped between the counter, the shelf, and Richie, envies this creature’s easy escape.

“You’re a spunky little guy, aren’t you?”

“What the _fuck_ did you just call me?” Eddie growls.

He isn’t sure if he’s more annoyed about the spunky comment or the height comment, or the fact that this guy’s left eye has a weird little squint to it that he can’t stop looking at.

“Here, I have the perfect book for you," Richie says. 

He twists around, taking a few short strides to the “Featured” shelf, pausing to coo at the cat that caught Eddie’s attention earlier. Richie raises a hand to drag his long, thick fingers first along the wood of the shelf, then along a row of titles, fingertips brushing over the spine of the books. _Large hands_ , Eddie thinks faintly, watching as Richie crooks his fingers to pluck a pink book off the shelf.

He presses the book into Eddie’s hands, their fingers brushing together, maybe for a moment too long, before Eddie looks down.

He scowls. “Oh, very funny, asshole. Don’t tell me you’re the kind of guy who unironically recommends _Fight Club_.”

“Oh dude, don’t tell me you’re the kind of guy who accepts the mainstream, film-bro interpretation of _Fight Club_ and fails to consider, among other things, that the author is a big fucking homo,” Richie retorts, mimicking his tone, head quirked to the side.

Eddie blinks several times, squeezing the book tightly in his hand, fingertips still burning with the ghost of Richie’s hand. “What?”

“Ooh, didn’t know that, did you?” Richie says. His voice is light, teasing, not even veering close to mean as he talks through the same toothy smile.

“I—no. Is that true?”

“Yep,” Richie says, looking all too pleased with himself, popping the _p_ exaggeratedly. “Completely different ending too.”

He watched Fight Club, years ago now, squeezed onto a couch between Bill and Bev. It struck him at the time as exceedingly macho, all toxic posturing that Bev decried from the moment the film began. At the time, Bill suggested it was a satire of masculinity, and Bev said a movie wasn’t satire if it failed to critique its subject. Eddie had just wanted to watch a fucking movie. He couldn’t help but think that Bev was right when she said that the violence was shot almost lovingly, that the narrator getting an ambiguously happy ending perhaps defeated the purpose. His only thoughts of the film in recent years have come from articles Audra passes along about MRAs.

He hasn’t spent very much time thinking about the identity of _any_ author, let alone Chuck Palahniuk, and it feels like yet another reminder he didn’t need that he came out in his late-thirties and maybe missed some things along the way.

“That’s—huh. That’s interesting,” he manages.

“I got all sorts of interesting stuff up here,” Richie says, tapping the side of his head.

“I’m sure.”

Richie reaches for the book, tugging it out of Eddie’s hand. He lets go, his fingertips sliding against the glossy cover in a gentle drag. Richie slides the book back onto a shelf which Eddie only now notices as a little tag sticking out, reading: “So You Missed the Point?”

“Can I help you find anything or did you just come in to insult my looks, intellect, and book recommendations?” Far from sounding offended, upset, annoyed, any variation of a normal, human reaction to Eddie’s attempts to bite the head off a stranger, Richie sounds _delighted_.

“You seem to be enjoying that enough,” Eddie says, daring.

“Maybe I am,” he replies, head cocked to the side again. He crosses his arms over his torso and Eddie forgets every word in the English language and all of his high school Spanish, for good measure. Arms.

He turns away from Richie to face the recommendations shelf again. The shelf has book titles. Book titles contain words and are likely a good starting place for reconstructing his arm-shattered lexicon. Nothing in the immediate vicinity could cool the rising heat on his face, the crawl of a flush making its way up his neck, so he focusses instead on the books. He makes his selection based on the fact fact that the title is one word and the cover is a pleasant purple. The sticky note on the cover says _Death can yearn too, as a treat_ , whatever the fuck that means.

“Any good?” he asks, plucking it from the shelf and turning the cover towards Richie.

“Well, I put it on the wall, didn’t I?”

Eddie is possessed by the incomprehensible urge to swat him across the chest and has to ball his free hand into a fist to stop himself.

“Do you know how to give a straight answer?” he snaps instead. The sound Richie lets out this time is nothing shy of a giggle.

“Oh honey, there is nothing straight about me,” Richie purrs. It induces a shiver that is completely unpleasant and certainly does not make Eddie’s stomach flip.

Before Eddie can glance back to the shelf, remember a few more words, maybe even remember some words that lean in the flirting direction (like his flirting oeuvre is not composed of waiting for people to message him first on Grindr and replying, as much as he can, with the thumbs up emoji), Bill rounds the corner.

He may be a walking disaster, an objectively terrible roommate, and an evil friend for failing to warn Eddie about the prospects of running into someone whose arms made Eddie’s brain turn off, but Bill is the most important person in his life and the sight of him popping into view from behind Richie is enough to ground him. Bill has one of his lopsided, twisting smiles on his face, tugging at his laugh lines.

“Look! Only two this time,” Bill says, waving both books in the air, proudly. ending the moment.

Not that Eddie thinks there was a moment. If there was, which there wasn’t, he doubts he would have known what to do with it.

Richie disappears behind the recommendations shelf, reappearing in a moment on the other side of the counter. He has to squeeze past Patty first, sitting at the trade-in desk. He pushes her chair in too far on purpose and she rolls the chair back over his foot, earning a yelp. Good for her.

When he finally stumbles past the towering piles of books behind the counter that remind Eddie vividly of their living room, he beckons them over to the sales counter with a grand sweep of his arms.

He greets Eddie again when they approach, putting on a drawl and pretending they’ve stumbled into his saloon. It is absolutely not charming at all. Eddie’s book selection comes out to $4, after applying the steadily-growing store credit they have, and it’s a rather good deal for something that returned the power of speech to him, even if he has no intention of reading it, thinking about it, or coming back into the store ever again.

They get their books, placed back into their reusable bag, and for saving a bag they get a little token. Richie gestures at a series of donation boxes and tells them that for each bag saved, the store donates one dollar to a local charity partner of the customer’s choice—a domestic violence shelter, an animal shelter, and a local LGBTQ+ youth organization. Audra would love this place, something striving towards environmentalism, something tied so tied to its community. They drop their tokens into the boxes and retreat back into the crisp February air of the city.

He doesn’t mean to, but Eddie pulls out his new book the second they are in the car. _Mort._ Unassuming. Death yearns for something, possibly. He intends to skim the first page, but he gets stuck on the inside of the cover, where Richie tucked the receipt and three paper bookmarks. _Enjoy :)_ is scrawled at the top of the receipt in the same, blocky handwriting as the sticky notes.

The car ride home is loud, Bill chattering over the radio station about Mike, about a podcast they both like, about the new book recommendations. Eddie can barely hear him over that laugh replaying in his head.


End file.
